psrc@pegasus.ATT.COM (Paul S. R. Chisholm) (11/07/89)
In article <10038@attctc.Dallas.TX.US>, chasm@attctc.Dallas.TX.US (Charles Marslett) writes: > And if the comment applied to the "small fortune" mention, I quote from a > Playboy, May, 1982, article on personal computers: (See, I *told* you he only reads it for the articles!-) > Manufacturer/Model Base Price Typical Price > Osborne I $1795 $2095 Ah, the Osborne I. Lousy screen, mediocre keyboard, questionable portability, immense bundle of software . . . great price. Kaypro followed basically the same strategy. I wasn't sure if I wanted one or not. I told my wife one day, "If the price of a system, software, *and* a daisy wheel printer ever drops below two K, I'm going to break down and buy one." Later that year, Kaypro offered a bundled system: 2 (4?) MHz Z80, 64K of RAM, two 180K (?) floppy disks, CP/M-80 2.2, Perfect Writer (actually a distant cousin of what's now Sprint, but no relation to Word Perfect) and other software, and and a daisy wheel printer for $1995. I still waited. > If you allow for inflation, a nice Amiga, Mac or IBM clone can be had for > the price of a cassette based 6502 machine of that day. Today, I could pick up the phone (or maybe even walk into a CompuAdd store) and get an 8Mz 8088 system with 640K of RAM, one 360K drive, one 20M hard disk, a (monochrome) graphics card and monitor, MS-DOS 3.3, Microsoft Works or some other low-end integrated software package, and (if I shopped around and drove a hard bargain) a Hewlett-Packard Laserjet IIP . . . for about two thousand dollars. For four thousand dollars, I'd get a 20 MHz 80386 system with 4M of RAM, one 1.2M floppy, one 1.44M floppy, a 80M hard disk, and a color VGA card and monitor, with the same software and printer. Either I was really stupid four (five?) years ago, paying three thousand dollars for an 8 MHz 8086 system with a dot matrix printer, or I was really smart not paying four thousand for an 8 MHz 80286 system. (Since I pretty much made the three thousand back writing magazine articles on PC's, I think I did okay.) > Charles Marslett, chasm@attctc.dallas.tx.us Paul S. R. Chisholm, AT&T Bell Laboratories att!pegasus!psrc, psrc@pegasus.att.com, AT&T Mail !psrchisholm I'm not speaking for the company, I'm just speaking my mind.